After more than 18 hours of firefighting, Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) personnel managed to extinguish a massive fire that involved timber waste and thick vegetation near the Lim Chu Kang Chinese Cemetery.
SCDF had been alerted to the blaze about 7:05am yesterday, and it turned out to be one of the longest firefighting operations involving vegetation fire in recent years. Eight emergency vehicles and about 52 firefighters had to be deployed to put out the fire, which is estimated to have been the size of a football field in length.
The deep-seated fire, abundance of thick vegetations and windy conditions caused challenges to properly stamp out the blaze and prolonged the firefighting operations into the night. Firefighters had to manually lay hoses across the considerable distance of 2 kilometers just to reach the nearest fire hydrants in the remote area.
The blaze was completely extinguished about 2am today, but firefighters have to continue damping-down operations — spraying water onto burnt surfaces to cool them down so fire won’t rekindle.
“We would like to thank the public for the outpouring of support as well as the expression of concern and well-wishes for our frontline officers, both online and offline,” wrote SCDF on Facebook.
“Your kind words keep their fighting spirit high even when the going gets really tough.”
